


Clean Start

by youjik33



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, mentions of Soos/Melody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 13:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12482500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youjik33/pseuds/youjik33
Summary: Good deeds need to be repaid, but favors aren't always welcome, and Abuelita's idea of fun is a little different from most people's.





	Clean Start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).



After the Pines brothers set sail, Soos refused to touch his former boss’ bedroom. “We’ll leave this room just as he left it,” he intoned solemnly, “as an homage to the man who made the Mystery Shack happen... who made the impossible possible.”

Abuelita gently pointed out that the room, much like the man who had slept in it for 30 years, had a certain pervasive odor that might just be alleviated by a deep clean, but Soos insisted. And so Abuelita, respectful of her grandson’s wishes, waited several weeks until Soos was out of the house to sneak in with the vaccuum.

She did make a point not to actually move anything, not even to empty the trash in the corner, but a good dusting and vaccuuming, with the window open for a bit to get a fresh breeze in, couldn’t hurt anything. As she was dusting off the windowsills, though, she thought she heard a voice.

Abuelita paused, letting the heavy curtains still their swinging. Maybe it was her imagination. But then she heard it again – a tiny voice saying, very plainly, “Help!”

It was too small a voice to be Soos. A child who had wandered away from a tour and gotten left behind in the latrine? No, it sounded like it was coming from inside the room. A ghost? Abuelita hadn’t seen a ghost in years, but it was certainly possible.

She cautiously stepped toward the bed. The voice seemed to be coming from that corner of the room, though she could barely hear it over the creaking of the floorboards. She bent to peer underneath – but she’d vacuumed underneath already and there wasn’t so much as a dust bunny. She frowned to herself as she straightened, and let her eyes wander across the bedspread, to the walls, and then upward.

Near the ceiling, barely visible in the shadows, was the biggest spiderweb she had ever seen, and there was definitely something moving in it.

“Help!” the voice said again. “Please help me!”

She stretched up on her toes, arm outstretched, back creaking, and jabbed at the spiderweb with the end of the feather duster. Something fell from the ceiling onto the pillow, where it coughed and spluttered and Abuelita tried to figure out just what she was seeing.

It seemed to be a person – an exceptionally tiny person, no bigger than one of her porcelain angel figurines, but with dark brown hair, tan skin, and wearing a very small pair of denim bib overalls. As she watched, it straighened, brushing dust and webbing off its clothes, and looked up at her.

“Many thanks, good lady!” it said in a tiny, squeaking voice, and gave her a deep bow. “My name is Ollie P. Pfeffernutter, and I am in your debt.”

“Do I get three wishes?” Abuelita asked eagerly.

“What?” The tiny person (man? Ollie seemed like a man’s name, but the creature was so small it was hard to make any real guesses) blinked its dark eyes. “No, I... I’m a brownie. We don’t really do wishes, more like favors and helping out.”

“Oh. No spinning straw into gold?”

“Yeah, uh, no, we don’t do that any more, it really messes up the commodities markets. But don’t worry! I’ll repay you somehow, just you wait!”

There was a puff of brown smoke, and he vanished. Why he couldn’t have just done that to escape the web in the first place, Abuelita wasn’t sure. She shrugged and picked up the feather duster again. Might as well finish what she started.

 

She had almost forgotten about her encounter with Ollie by the following afternoon, when she decided to settle down with her knitting and watch some TV. She reached into her basket to pull out the blanket she’d been working on, and just kept pulling.

She was sure she’d left it only about two-thirds done yesterday, but somehow, it was completely finished. The stitching looked perfect, too, blending in with the ones she’d made. She sighed and folded it up again, wondering if she had the yarn to start a new one.

“Surprise!” a little voice said. Ollie had suddenly appeared on the arm of the chair, looking very pleased with himself. “Do you like it? Sure saved you a lot of work, right?”

“It looks nice,” she admitted. “But knitting is not work. I knit blankets because I like to. It relaxes me while I watch my stories.”

Ollie looked at the TV. “This is professional wrestling.”

“Yes.”

“...okay, I get it,” he said. “Sorry. I guess things aren’t like the old days, huh? So you knit for fun, not for work. Don’t help with the knitting. I gotta figure something else out. Oh, I know!”

And he vanished again, just as suddenly as he’d appeared.

Abuelita sighed, wondering what he was going to surprise her with next.

 

She didn’t have to wait long to find out. Opening the cupboard door at dinnertime, she found all of her spices had been carefully alphabetized. It took her almost 20 minutes to get them back in the order she preferred – things she used all the time at the front of the cupboard, the odds and ends in the back. There was a bottle of celery seed in there that was older than Soos; it certainly didn’t need to be within easy reach.

“I screwed up again,” Ollie said mournfully, appearing on the kitchen counter. “Guess I shouldn’t try surprises any more. What do you want me to do for you? The laundry?”

“Thank you, no,” she answered, putting the garlic powder in its place and shutting the door. “I want to handle my own delicates.”

“Dishes?”

“I like doing the dishes.”

“Cleaning the toilet? No one likes cleaning the toilet.”

“I do,” Abuelita said placidly.

“Seriously?”

“I enjoy cleaning. It relaxes me, and I am very good at it,” she explained.

“Well, what do you want? What do you need in life?”

She considered the question. “Food, clothing, a roof over my head. I have all of those things. For my Soos to be happy, but he’s happier now than I’ve ever seen him.” From the next room, as if on cue, came the sound of laughter, Soos’ and Melody’s both. “For myself, I would love to live to see a great-grandchild, but things seem to be going well, and I know better than to try rushing it.”

“But I still have to repay you,” Ollie said in exasperation. “I mean, I literally have to. It’s a magical compulsion thing. I’ll figure this out, even if it takes me weeks.”

 

The brownie was true to his word. Weeks did go by without a glimpse of him, and Abuelita did her own cleaning, washing, cooking, and knitting quite contentedly without his help. She had started to wonder if he’d just skipped out, magical compulsion or no, but one morning she came into the living room to find a paper-wrapped parcel lying in her armchair.

 _Abuelita_ was written on the top. (Not actually her name, of course, but she had been called nothing else for so long that it may as well have been.) She unwrapped the paper carefully. Whatever was inside was very light and she didn’t want to damage it.

It turned out she needn’t have worried. It was yarn. Five balls, each in a different vibrant color, and softer than anything she had ever felt. It was the most beautiful yarn she had ever seen.

“It’s from the elusive winged alpacas of Macchu Picchu,” Ollie explained, appearing on the back of the sofa. “Took me a while to find a source, but there’s more where that came from, if you like it.”

“I do,” Abuelita breathed, unable to resist rubbing some of the yarn against her face. Wearing something made from this would be like wearing a warm fuzzy cloud.

“So we’re even?” Ollie asked.

“Keep getting me a supply of this yarn, and I’ll save your life whenever you need it,” she replied.

He looked relieved, snapping another bow before vanishing.

Abuelita made herself a cup of tea, and settled down in her armchair with the yarn in her lap, wondering what to make first. Feeling very optimistic, she picked up the yellow ball, and started on a pair of baby booties.

 


End file.
